Articles

This is a recent article I have written for SHARE for the Security Corner. This article and others can be accessed for free at SHARE’s website. For the typical mainframer, any system that does not have the letter z at the beginning of its name is not really a system […]

IRRDBU00 is the IBM RACF database unload utility that can be used to create a sequential file from a RACF database. The sequential file produced can then be used to: View the RACF environment configuration Used as input for programs Manipulated with sort/merge utilities Be loaded into a database manager […]

It is important to understand what owning a RACF resource really means to avoid security misconfigurations and the introduction of security vulnerabilities in your mainframe environment. In this article, I will try to explain the concept of a RACF resource OWNER, and describe what the OWNER can actually do. Let’s […]

In order to run Unix System Services (USS) shell commands, scripts and others, from a batch job, you can use the BPXBATCH program provided with z/OS. BPXBATCH can be invoked form a JCL (batch job) or from TSO: JCL: EXEC PGM=BPXBATCH,PARM=’SH program-name’ EXEC PGM=BPXBATCH,PARM=’PGM program-name’ TSO: BPXBATCH SH program-name BPXBATCH […]

Different levels of authority and RACF attributes allow you to issue different types of RACF commands. In this article we will see which RACF commands one can issue with each level of authority and attributes. System Special or Group Special Attribute Command Operands ADDSD With all operands ADDGROUP With all […]